Usually, a “soft launch” of a website involves few people finding out about it, and working out the kinks as awareness ramps up. It seems a social media soft launch is really about waiting three minutes until everyone finds out! The great people behind Podcamp Toronto soft-launched the 2010 website and registration yesterday, and seeing as it targets a group of people who tend to broadcast everything they do, it didn’t stay quiet for long.

It bums me out to no end that conflicting commitments are keeping me away from my podcamp toronto friends this year. Though it’s not my home city, I do consider it a social media home, and will miss seeing good friends this february..

If you have any thoughts of going, go register now (it’s FREE!).. If you are thinking of not going, what the hell is wrong with you? You won’t find more a more open and passionate event. Go if you need to learn about production, social media, or just to feed off the vibe – just go and say hi to my dear friends while you’re there..

Tell ‘em Bob sent ya

Photo credit :
PodCamp Toronto opens, originally uploaded by griffintech.

At bitnorth ‘09, I told a story about our adventure in pirate radio in the early 90’s….Despite being unlicensed, and by extension not bound by CRTC (Canada’s FCC) rules, we found ourselves emulating commercial radio. We didn’t swear (on purpose anyway), we played station IDs at the top of the hour, we did our best to abide by rules that didn’t apply to us.

Sure, we had fun, but we limited ourselves by abiding by these rules that weren’t ours. Part of that was born of our wish to not attract too much attention and seem just like any other station to someone who happened to be twirling the dial (twirling – that’s how radio listeners surfed, young’uns)..

Looking back though, I do somewhat regret we didn’t take more chances. After all, contrary to what we believed then, we had almost nothing to lose. No family member was going to stop getting food – the worst that could have happened is we would have paid a little fine and lose a CD player or two.. What a great story that would be 20 years later….

So here you are in 2010, and by reading this, I know you’re also online.. What rules are you following? A quick search of posts this week give you plenty of rules to choose from :

• Food Rules
• 10 Golden rules of social media
• Rules for Twitter
• 10 Rules of Good Design
• Good Rules for Blogging
• Rules for a great blog comment

–  ENOUGH!

I’m not picking on these authors, but holy crap it’s as if there are only two groups of people online:

1. Those who make up rules.
2. Those who follow them.

Can I point out that NO ONE in group 2 has much chance at success?

So where does that leave us?… You can try to lead group 2 by being in group 1. or,

You can be in group 3, and refuse to be defined around rules that don’t apply to you.

Whose rules are you following? and why?

Photo:
BOOK CLUB RULES, originally uploaded by Bob Goyetche.

(or “Bob, why are you lying down in the snowy driveway?” )

Why did I take a picture of my tire (or tyre, UK-friends)? It’s part of something called “The Daily Shoot“. A simple way to take more pictures… As with any skill, you (apparently) get better at photography the more you do it, so when I came across this site I immediately jumped in.

The idea is that there is an assignment each day, you take that shot, publish it somewhere and tweet it to @dailyshoot. The site then scans for those tweets, and makes a thumbnail gallery of the pictures taken. No contest, no prizes, no product placements. There are no gear requirements or anything, a camera phone is fine – the idea is to get you out there and shooting.

I’ve added some complexity for myself in that I will try to get as far as I can with this by only using my 50mm lens. I think it may help me think about shot composition some more…

Once again, there’s no money, it’s just a fun way to learn/observe/share this fun hobby. It’s also a fun way to see how people interpret the assignments.

Grab your camera, and join the fun at Daily Shoot!

Something I almost never do, is look at the stats for this blog – after all, it’s not there to pull in thousands of readers, it’s a “home base” kinda blog that links my other projects together… Anyway, I pulled the stats for the my most read posts during the last year :

Some things are interesting to note here.. the “Tetes a claques” post is (By far!) my most read post. In fact, it’s the 4th biggest hit for “tetes a claques” on Google. I almost want to delete this post from 2007, as this isn’t how I want people to find me.. Another option would be to go back and edit that post and load it with adsense links or something… bleah…

To be honest, I’m pretty happy with the way the rest of the list works out – It’s quite varied for topics, and my bio page even makes an appearance in the top ten. I guess that means some people reading my non-Tetes-a-claques material do in fact want to know more about me. This, is cool. After all, that’s what this blog is all about.

I’m happy I’ve resisted the urge and suggestion to go topic-specific on this blog, there’s lots of room to do that elsewhere.  The “Blogging experts” will tell you to have a blog about one topic, to hit the niche well, and often. What many of them won’t tell you though, is how to look human. If you’re into this whole online thing, the last thing you want to do is make your namesake blog about only one thing – there’s more to you than that.

If you feel you must consistently blog about a particular subject, come up with a clever name and start that project.

For your own name though, try to be you.

In my house, we celebrate Christmas.. It’s just the way things are. To us, it’s about family, friends, children, magic, smiles, and enjoying the company of people important to us.

I hope you have important people, and that you are important to someone as well. I’m blessed to have both, and will be enjoying both these situations  during this holiday season.

2009 was a bitch to a lot of people, 2010 will make up for it – I feel it.

Whatever it is you celebrate (or don’t) have a happy (or not) one from my family and I.

Photo:
Our Xmas Tree, originally uploaded by Bob Goyetche.

Not just in a dimly-lit room, I mean COMPLETELY in the dark. No way to see where your food is, or even what it is. It’s quite the experience.

Last Tuesday night, we were part of a group of Montreal bloggers/tweeters invited to a “tweet-up” as part of the launch of Molson’s Rickard’s Dark beer. It was a  fun event, held at the John Molson room at the brewery.  For a guy like me, just being at the brewery is a blast, having done my part over the years to contribute to the revenue stream there..

Here’s a stunning revelation that will come as a shock to some marketers, but especially to self-declared social media experts :

Just because I bought your product DOES NOT MEAN i’m part of your community.

*I* (Joe Consumer) get to decide if I’m part of you community. If you assume that our business transaction implicitly means I want to have more dealings with you – you may be in for a shock.

I can hear you now: “…. but Cluetrain says that markets are conversations!”. There’s a lot of truth to that, but here’s the tough part – the consumer decides when that conversation ends.

You make think otherwise, and as a “Social Media Expert” you’ve convinced your client that you can control this,  but it’s not up to you.

Any attempt on your part to continue after it’s over makes you look like the ex-boyfriend who can’t accept that it’s over. You keep pestering and phoning and hanging up and stuff. You know what that means? You’ve just obliterated your chance of having a quickie for old time’s sake somewhere down the road – you lose it all.

Why not just appreciate the transaction, and make sure that the exchange of goods/services speaks for you after the transaction ends. That could end up doing a lot more for you..

Photo credit: Separated From The Herd,  by barto.

Obscene name, originally uploaded by Bob Goyetche.

My son got a Webkinz stuffed animal for his birthday.. There’s a code you use to go to a website and join an online world with all kinds of games, and probably opportunities to spend mom & dad’s hard-earned money. Unless, of course, you have an OBSCENE name like Simon.

So my wife Cat calls customer service, and gets told it’s a bug – any name with “mon” in it gets blocked out.

Bugs happen, I have several friends who make a living fixing bugs. Bugs shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, it’s how they are handled that sets your company apart.

In this case, we get told it’s a bug (duh!). That’s it, that’s all. No offer to help. The customer service rep didn’t offer to create the account, the obviously simpler way was to give our child a new name.

While it’s not the end of the world, if you notice in a few months that you can’t find any kids named Monicas, Simon, or Damon – you’ll know why.

How is your company dealing with its bugs?

thumbs up, originally uploaded by TheTruthAbout….

So a few weeks ago I told you about my “compatible” cheap-o Macbook Pro battery.. Here’s how it’s going..

• Really well.

After several cycles, I’m getting around 3 hours a charge, which seems to me is about what I was getting with the genuine Apple battery when it was new. I could probably get more time if I tweaked the settings more, but I’m picky about things like seeing my screen.

In conclusion, $60 well spent so far, and the Mac doesn’t seem to know the difference.

They wave, from  Bob’s flickrstream.

Leaving Montreal last week on business, I heard some passengers giggling and happened to look outside as we pulled away from the terminal. There was the Westjet ground crew, smiling and waving us on our way.

Westjet people are known to be somewhat more smiley than the sourpusses at our other airlines (especially Air-don’t-bother-me-Canada).. but what this really shows how even roles that may not be considered “customer-facing” actually are.

Is this a policy at Westjet? or just something the employees do for fun? I didn’t see them doing this in Edmonton, so maybe it’s a local thing.

One thing I know for sure, the people on my side of the plane took off with smiles on their faces, and may remember those waves the next time they book a flight. I know I’ll remember that I can give my money to friendly people, or to people I am bothering because I happen to be their client.

How much does NOT waving cost?